Nice idea,i'll take "friendly" over "enforcement" anytime.Several people have asked to use my sounds without attribution (legally they have to ask) and i say they are welcome,i just like access/links to the often interesting things downloaders do with these sounds.It upsets me when i hear (especially from professionals) ...."great resource but too much legal hassle". I only choose attribution (CC BY) and not PD because i don't want these sounds uploaded untouched somewhere else with a pricetag on them....everyone should know they are free. Encouraging friendliness and trust in a community rather than hounding with a book of rules might make honest people out of us.

juskiddinkI only choose attribution (CC BY) and not PD because i don't want these sounds uploaded untouched somewhere else with a pricetag on them....everyone should know they are free.

Good point. But when tons of PD samples are available for free, commercial sample packs will have to bring a more unique quality to the table. So PD might be good for both the free and the commercial scene.

It always strikes me that discussions on this subject often center on the credit / ego / money stuff (i.e., uploader <-> user interaction) but miss the user-to-user side of the question. This is very important to me: whether the license facilitates or hinders distribution of knowledge from an user to another.

What happens if, for example, someone browsing the vast FS database 'discovers' a wonderful sample largely neglected before. Would all licenses be equally effective at making this 'gem' accessible to a larger number of people?

If the license of this particular sample forced attribution, then the first user discovering it must (should) communicate to other people interested in sounds where this rare wonder can be found, without any intermediaries. Knowledge has flown user <-> user. This is not unlike honeybee behaviour, in which when one insect finds a valuable food resource (a patch of flowers) communicates its location to other bees in the hive and the whole community can benefit

Now, what happens if the amazing sample was in the public domain? The discoverer simply uses the sample, can even sell it, whatever. Not cool, ok, but what's important to me is: the first user can keep the source secret! No knowledge flow, not now my friend... Public domain does not enhance honeybee-style colaboration, on the contrary it encourages the gold-prospector syndrome. I don't like this

rutgermuller. But when tons of PD samples are available for free, commercial sample packs will have to bring a more unique quality to the table.

Yes, and with freesound 2 coming soon and its choice between licenses CC BY and CC BY-NC,the truth of this is probably going to become a lot clearer. The PD license seems to have been withdrawn by Creative commons.

1 I think that even Sampling+ is too vague, especially the "You may not use this work to advertise for or promote anything but the work you create from it." part

rutgermuller. But when tons of PD samples are available for free, commercial sample packs will have to bring a more unique quality to the table.

Yes, and with freesound 2 coming soon and its choice between licenses CC BY and CC BY-NC,the truth of this is probably going to become a lot clearer. The PD license seems to have been withdrawn by Creative commons.

1 I think that even Sampling+ is too vague, especially the "You may not use this work to advertise for or promote anything but the work you create from it." part

....if i understood it right then i think i'm quite happy with this license,especially in the light of Dobroides' fine post above :wink:

Ah right, then CC-BY is indeed very usable. I'm still in favor of (friendly) PD though because I don't care if some people abuse my sounds, I just want to make it as easy as possible for people to use them, it's all about spreading sound and helping each other out in the first place.

Wow, comparing CC licenses with Orwell's 1984 it's a bit too much, isn't? I disagree completely!As for the metaphore of the tree and the grass leaves, well, I think it's a bit short-sighted... and inexact. I don't want to go more offtopic, but let me briefly refute this view with a quotation from Prof Daniel Janzen, a specialist in plant biology: "The world is not colored green, but L-dopa, cocaine and caffeine"